1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to consumer shopping and purchase support services and, more particularly, to a method and system for assisting in the evaluation of products, pricing and purchase options using a Rich Internet Application (RIA) client that can be download on demand or exist as a locally installed application, accessible directly from any accelerated or researchable page, web based or otherwise, containing product information, to collect and present targeted information from a central data repository(said information having been acquired by specialized software spiders), and consolidate it in a navigational user-interface that combines an array of information tools necessary for consumers to obtain comprehensive shopping and purchase support without leaving the web page they are viewing. A method for adding XML elements containing product-related information into a video stream is also disclosed, to thereby enable a user to ascertain static information about a product displayed in a video stream by selecting it with a pointing device.
2. Description of the Background
The volume of on-line shopping has eclipsed local shopping in recent years as consumers grow more comfortable with electronic commerce. Part of the trend is due to speed and convenience. When a user accesses a typical ecommerce web site with a product request, the request and its associated parameters, such as the product name and model number, are passed from a web server to an application server. The application server performs necessary computation to identify what kind of data it needs from the database. Then the application server sends appropriate queries to the database or other sources. After the database returns the query results to the application server, the application server uses these to prepare a web page and passes it to the web server, which then sends it to the user. In milliseconds, the user receives comprehensive product information including current pricing.
Despite the convenience, consumers are inherently uncomfortable unless they shop around. Even when an ultimate purchase is made locally, consumers very often conduct an online price check and do online research to ensure that their planned purchase is price-competitive and a worthy product. Still, consumers can spend an inordinate amount of time searching for specific products and performing price comparisons. A variety of existing search engines attempt to consolidate the comparison shopping task, including Google™ product search, Yahoo® Shopping, Epinions® and PriceScan®. These search engines break down information into categories-directories or indexes. Directories group retailers under similar categories, such as furniture or electronics. The results of a search will be a list of web sites related to a search term. Indexes use software programs called spiders that scour the Internet, analyzing millions of web pages principally hosted by database-driven ecommerce web sites, social network sites, publication sites and newsgroup postings, indexing all of the words. Depending on their revenue model, many such search engines solicit advertising and preferentially rank their advertisers, thereby eroding consumer confidence. As a result, finding a desirable or low price for an item on the Internet is no easy task. It is still necessary to check multiple websites to ensure that you are getting the price on the best product. The consumer typically finds an appealing product on a retailer website, then checks the manufacturer websites for detailed information on the product, then checks rating websites for user reviews or problems associated with the product, then checks multiple price comparison engines to find the best prices on the product, and then checks auction or reverse auction websites for a street value reference price. This prolonged web browsing process is cumbersome and time consuming, and is fraught with potential pitfalls. Even if a consumer succeeds in finding an item at a good price there is no unified way to measure if it is the best price available, because there is not a non-preferential comprehensive price listing to compare it to. Consequently, there remains a high degree of consumer doubt that such search engines are non-biased and truly comprehensive, giving a truly comprehensive price comparison despite nuances in retailer descriptions and product SKU numbers. Therefore, just because a price comparison website indicates a seemingly low price, the consumer should always be wary. Many price comparison sites lack a deep depth of merchants, or retailer neutrality, or merchant reliability ratings, and so a low price might not actually provide a consumer with a good value. There are, very simply, too many variables and details to keep track of when shopping, and no existing comparison sites which consolidate all variables and details in a clean, useable user-interface. The comparison tools described above individually give only part of the picture, though when used together they can be extremely valuable to consumers.
With the continued growth in use of smart phones and personal data assistants (PDAs), some search engine providers have expanded into mobile comparison shopping. There are now a variety of mobile application price comparison engines, including SMS-based comparison, mobile web applications, and native client applications, which require installation on a computing device before use. Some existing native client applications even offer features such as bar code scanning, such as Barnes & Noble's Bookstore™ iPhone® applet. Users can snap a photo of a book cover, or barcode, which then links to more information about the book. The applet also includes a store locator, recommendations on other books that might appeal, a store events calendar, online purchasing, and video clips of interviews with authors. There is no price comparison or retailer neutrality.
Consolidating all the variables and details needed for truly informed product pricing decisions is a daunting task. Consumers typically do it manually by finding and visiting a variety of product review sites and price comparison engines, and then typing in search terms at each site. Partial solutions exist in the form of multiple price comparison website search engines. A variety of these exist, such as RoboShopper.com. With RoboShopper®, the consumer enters search keyword(s) once and click's a “Shop” button. However, the end result is a listing of multiple comparison and information engines. This approach saves keystrokes because it is no longer necessary to re-enter keywords at multiple sites each specializing in product information, reviews or online price comparison services, as well as local shopping engines (Yellow Pages). However, RoboShopper® is simply a navigation tool that links to these other sites, and it is still necessary to navigate amongst and between multiple sites to glean the necessary information.
What is needed is an entirely different approach, a turnkey system including a central data repository including an Internet based database, spiders that scour the Internet analyzing the millions of product-oriented pages, a server application for classifying and indexing all of the information derived from the spiders, and a Rich Internet Application (RIA) that is accessible directly from any viewed webpage containing product information, which draws information from the central data repository and consolidates it in a navigational user-interface that puts all of the information tools necessary to obtain a comprehensive product picture at the consumers fingertips, without ever leaving the page they were originally viewing.